Home > Work > The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
101 " People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist. And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice. And it is like if everyone in the world was tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special. But they wouldn’t be because there would be millions of people who didn’t get 5,698 heads. "
― Mark Haddon , The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
102 " And so, if you get lost in time it is like being lost in a desert, except that you can’t see the desert because it is not a thing. "
103 " ...I took the little radio from the kitchen and I went and sat in the spare room and I tuned it halfway between two stations so that all I could hear was white noise and I turned the volume up really loud and I held it against my ear and the sound filled my head and it hurt so that I couldn't feel any other sort of hurt, like the hurt in my chest "
104 " sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth. "
105 " prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them. "
106 " Life is difficult, you know. It's bloody hard telling the truth all the time. Sometimes it's impossible. "
107 " He had dreadlocks, which is what some black people have, but he was white, and dreadlocks is when you never wash your hair and it looks like old rope. "
108 " ..but in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do. "
109 " For example, people often say “Be quiet,” but they don’t tell you how long to be quiet for. Or you see a sign which says KEEP OFF THE GRASS but it should say KEEP OFF THE GRASS AROUND THIS SIGN or KEEP OFF ALL THE GRASS IN THIS PARK because there is lots of grass you are allowed to walk on. "
110 " En la vida tienes que tomar montones de decisiones, y si no tomaras decisiones, nunca harías nada, porque te pasarías todo el tiempo eligiendo entre las cosas que hacer. O sea, que es bueno tener una razón por la que odias unas cosas y te gustan otras. "
111 " most people are almost blind and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on. "
112 " I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this. "
113 " And this shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer. "
114 " like when you wake up at night, and the only sounds you hear are the sounds inside your head. "
115 " That was because when I was little I didn't understand about other people having minds. "
116 " He held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan. I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. We do this because sometimes father wants to give me a hug, but I do not like hugging people so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me. "
117 " I think people believe in heaven because they don’t like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don’t like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish. "
118 " And outside the window was like a map, except it was in 3 dimensions and it was life-size because it was the thing it was a map of. "
119 " He asked whether I wanted to become an astronaut and I said I did. He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn’t take orders. "
120 " Siobhan dice che se si solleva un sopracciglio, questo gesto può significare molte cose differenti. Può voler dire: “Voglio fare sesso con te”, ma può anche essere inteso come: “Hai appena detto una cosa veramente stupida”. "